Last week BMW announced that work on a second North American plant kicked off in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. According to various BMW officials, the plant will be used to build the upcoming G20 3 Series range but thanks to the new Cluster Architecture (CLAR) it would appear like a wider range of models will be eligible for production in Mexico.
According to Automotive News Europe, Oliver Zipse, BMW board member for production confirmed at a press event that the new architecture will allow the plant to build any rear-wheel drive model or crossover to be built in Mexico. However, you shouldn’t get your hopes up. The new plant will only be able to get about 150,000 units done per year and that means that most of the cars made here will be 3 Series models, leaving little room for anything else.
The $1 billion investment that will be made here will make sure that the newest plant in BMW’s portfolio will also be incorporating the latest technologies available and it will be as eco-friendly as possible. In this regard, the Germans claim that their San Luis Potosi facility will be the first in their network that will have zero process wastewater.
Rainwater will be used in the washrooms and closed-circuit cooling towers in the body shop and water-saving fittings or treated waste will make sure that water consumption is reduced significantly. On top of this, the paint shop will use reconditioned and recycled water, making this the “lowest water consumption per vehicle produced in the production network.”
Almost 70 percent of the cars built in Mexico will be exported to the North American continent according to BMW’s estimates while shipping to the EU will be cheaper as taxes for Mexico are about 10 percent lower than those for cars made in the US, at the Spartanburg plant.
